NPR News

Home ownership has long been considered a key part of the American Dream. The dream has taken a beating in recent years, but polls show the desire to own remains extremely high. NPR's Chris Arnold discusses the state of home ownership and reviews the latest housing news with host Rachel Martin.

On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters will decide whether Republican Scott Walker becomes just the third governor recalled from office in U.S. history. But as NPR's David Schaper reports, some now wonder whether the intensity of the left has been eclipsed by the resolve of the right.

Sunday marks 50 years since what was then the world's deadliest airplane accident: a crash that claimed 130 lives outside Paris. The most devastated community was not in France, but in the United States.

It was the worst thing that ever happened to Milton Bevington. He witnessed the crash of the Boeing 707 at Orly Airport, with his wife and mother-in-law onboard.

"The plane went up about 6 feet and came back down and bounced around, zigzagged and finally broke in half," he said.

From our "How To Do Everything" podcast:

Among the many gifts Queen Elizabeth II will receive for her Diamond Jubilee is a special lamprey pie from the town of Gloucester. It's a tradition dating back centuries. Lampreys may seem like an odd gift for a monarch, but one person's eel-like parasite which sucks the blood of fish is another person's delicacy.

When the economy began its steep decline in 2008, almost everything related to housing hit the skids, including the lawn and garden industry. But one sector escaped the pinch: food gardening.

In fact, food gardening sales nationwide have spiked 20 percent since then, and they've stayed there. While many households started growing food to be more budget-conscious, some are deciding vegetables and fruits can be beautiful, too.

Marina Keegan had just graduated from Yale University with a degree in English and was headed off to a job at The New Yorker. On May 26, she died in a car crash near her family's summer home in Massachusetts.

The Beach Boys are in harmony again. The group is recording and performing together, after years of disputes and estrangement.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love tell Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that they're not surprised at the reunion.

"We've had 50 years' practice," Wilson says, "not just in music but in being guys."

Love says once they got back in the studio and started writing again, it felt like they had never left.

"It was nuts," Wilson says. "It was a nutbuster."

With violence escalating and journalists barred from the country, it's becoming harder to know how far and fast Syria is slipping into chaos. Host Guy Raz speaks with Paul Wood, world affairs correspondent for the BBC and one of few western journalists to have visited in the country in recent weeks. Then Raz speaks with Marwa Daoudy, visiting professor at Princeton from Oxford University, and Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, about the stakes of Western intervention to halt the violence.

With the unemployment rate climbing to 8.2 percent, the Mitt Romney presidential campaign can focus on the economy as issue No. 1 this November. Host Guy Raz speaks with news analyst James Fallows of The Atlantic about the economic malaise and how it may affect the election.

Among the more than 12 million Americans out of work, almost half have been out of work for more than six months. In its latest issue, Bloomberg Businessweek magazine profiles 12 people among these long-term unemployed who have managed to get back into the workforce. Host Guy Raz talks with Josh Green, senior national correspondent with Bloomberg Businessweek.

As both parties turn to the general election, and the potentially pivotal role of minority voters, battles over voter identification and other new state election laws are intensifying.

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